Local News

Hot Topics:

Crisp directing, acting in 'Alex Cross'

By HARRY H. LONG

Updated:
02/22/2013 05:04:28 PM EST

"It's Tyler Perry as you've never seen him before," shouts the promotional tag for the action thriller, "Alex Cross."

And it's true: he never once dons a fat suit and a dress. OK, I'll be serious now. The titular detective/psychiatrist "Alex Cross" - previously portrayed by Morgan Freeman - is now portrayed by the much younger Perry (I suppose this constitutes one of those reboots that Hollywood is so fond of lately).

It's not that Perry is really a stranger to drama; even in his Madea productions he has some serious moments. But here, he is being presented as (at least part of the time) as an action hero, though of the thinking variety, and my eyebrows elevated in marginal disbelief at the opening where the tubby Perry pursues a perp for what seems like miles and even catches him. (That he nearly wins a later fight with the buff Matthew Fox is even more credulity stretching.)

Of course, you might rightly note that no one watches these things for believability and they'd probably be a lot less fun if they were less preposterous. Then again, any film where Cross' wife and his partner's lover (also part of Cross' team) both fall victim to the bad guy is difficult to categorize as "fun."

The plot has a super-creative hit man (Fox) on a mission to take out a series of targets; his first is a young woman whom he tortures to death in order to obtain a computer password that will reveal the other two victims. The second attempt, which Cross and his team thwart, involves invading an office building through an ingenious route.

Advertisement

By this time you might well wonder why this guy is paid help rather than running his own criminal organization (not to mention where he got the specs to that skyscraper).

Having his operation frustrated vexes our heavy considerably and he tortures the female member of Cross' team to death and takes out Cross' pregnant wife in a sniper attack. Naturally, Cross must get revenge (or justice, depending on your viewpoint) and he's willing to break a few rules (and a few noggins). While none of the publicity attests that "This time it's personal," that doesn't mean the clichés haven't been honored - including a superior officer who insists on ignoring Cross' observations, naturally leading to disaster.

All in all, it's nothing you haven't seen before, but it's crisply directed by Rob Cohen (though I could have done without the shaky cam during the climactic fistfight) and well-acted, particularly by Fox (who's a revelation here and walks off with the picture), and by Cicely Tyson in a lovely turn as Cross' mother.

2012 / Summit Entertainment / 101m / BluRay [PG-13]

THE ORIGINS OF OZ

While the 1939 MGM adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz" may (as this documentary notes) have been seen more times by more people than any other movie ever made, few know very much about L. Frank Baum, the author of the book on which it was based.

Baum seems to have been destined to be a writer; when he was only 15, he saw a toy printing press in a shop window and coerced his mother into buying it. He soon got involved in the amateur journalism movement that was popular in the latter half of the 1800s and the early part of the 1900s (he was born in 1856). Unlike most men of his time he was a supporter of women's rights, which may have been the result of growing up in a house mostly made up of women (his salesman father was frequently on the road) and certainly influenced by marrying the daughter of a suffragette.

The documentary suggests that the very plucky Dorothy was kid-lit's first emancipated woman (no swooning princess, waiting in a tower for a prince to come along and rescue her) and likely a result of the women in Baum's life. Baum also early on authored a number of musical stage plays, but on moving to South Dakota so his wife could be nearer her family, he turned to being the proprietor of a store.

That business failed because of the economic crisis in the area (an early taste of the dust bowl) as did a newspaper he started up, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. In that he editorialized on women's rights and wrote several times about a tornado that swept through the area, picking up a house and dropping it several miles away (and you know where his fascination with that event led).

The Oz books, in fact, were very nearly Baum's only successful venture. Other books he wrote were not as popular and even a venture into film production, making features inspired by the books, bankrupted him. Discussions of the films that preceded the Judy Garland version are possibly the weakest section of "The Origins of Oz." One of the talking heads states that Baum was unable to continue production because of the introduction of sound, even though that technological advance didn't come about until nearly a decade after Baum's death in 1919. There's also no mention of a later silent effort to bring the first Oz book to the screen.

And for that matter, why so many clips from the MGM film and almost none from Baum's own productions? Informative though it is, curious omissions and errors such as that keep this short film from being definitive.

2010 / Inception Media Group / 46m / $14.98 [NR]

THE POOL

Sometimes a film can be so quiet and understated that it very nearly isn't there at all, and that's pretty much the case with "The Pool."

Nineteen-year-old Venkatesh works in a Panjim hotel, mostly cleaning rooms and scrubbing floors and toilets, but also doing some cooking, delivering room service and taking care of the laundry. For extra rupees he sells plastic bags in the marketplace with young Jhangir, an 11-year-old restaurant worker (who is so impoverished he sleeps on one of that establishment's tables). Venkatesh has discovered a vacant, but not abandoned, house in the hills that boasts a swimming pool (curiously crystal clean and always filled even when the owners are not in residence). He perches in a tree and peers longingly at it over the garden wall. But he won't trespass and swim in it because that would be like theft.

Eventually, the owners, a man and his daughter, come to stay and Venkatesh manages to ingratiate himself into the father's graces and get hired on as a gardening assistant. He also becomes infatuated with the daughter and takes to dropping in on her at the park, where she goes to read, during his lunch break.

Venkatesh seems congenitally incapable of keeping quiet; he regales father and daughter with tales of his life in the rural community where he grew up. Some of these stories seem improbable - such as the one that has him possessed by a female ghost for six months. Much of the film is taken up with his inane chattering and what plot there is has him slowly becoming closer to the father, though not so much to the daughter. The older man apparently detects something in the younger one and arranges to have him attend school. Because this will entail moving to Bombay, far away from his rural family and also away from his friend Jhangir a crisis ensues - or at least as much a one as this nigh, inert film allows itself.

I have to admit I found myself as much fascinated (mostly by the ravishly photographed landscapes) as bored, wondering just where, if anywhere, things were going. That it is a coming-of-age story for Vankatesh only becomes apparent in the final moments, and I suspect many viewers won't last that long. This might be one of those cases where it's advisable the watch the making of featurette first. It reveals that much of the formless nature of the film was dictated by the circumstances of production.

And the revelation that Venkatesh and Jhangir really are street kids makes their performances even more impressive.

2007 / Kino Lorber / 94m [NR]

SMILEY

This horror film is like the curate's egg; parts of it are very good indeed. It surmounts a far too derivative set-up and an adherence to formula, but then stumbles at the end.

Ashley (Caitlin Garard) is about to start her first semester at college not living in a dorm; she moves in with a freewheeling type who promptly drags her off to a wild party. Good girl Ashley in no time is smoking weed and imbibing a variety of intoxicants. In the course of this shindig she discovers that if you type in "I did it for the lulz" three times ("lulz" per this film is Internet-speak for "for the heck of it") during a video chat, a ghastly character dubbed Smiley appears behind the other person and kills them (anyone who doesn't recognize the borrowing from "Candyman" just isn't paying attention).

For that matter, a supernatural creature called up by video means isn't all that far from "Ringu" territory, but we'll let that pass. Of course, all these young folk derive great merriment from this because they believe it's some sort of hoax and Ashley's roommate goads her into committing one of these murders the next day. And, of course, it is real, and Smiley next comes after the people who summoned him by making special guest appearances in their dreams (a nifty stunt he learned from Freddy Kreuger perhaps).

"Smiley" transcends its obvious borrowings primarily with an inspired design for its monster. Supposedly, Smiley sewed his eyes shut and carved his face into an enormous grin for reasons that remain unexplained. Similarly unclarified is why his seems to have a burlap sack for a face (though sometimes it appears as smooth as a casaba melon) with the smile also stitched. No matter, it's a truly creepy creation and that he (it?) is given little screen time makes each appearance that much more effective.

The dream sequences are terrific little essays in terror (and perhaps it should be mentioned here that this is one gorgeously photographed film). While the rest of the collegians are the usual interchangeable personality-free types, Garard turns in a commendable performance; her emotional disintegration, as she's not sure if she's really being stalked by a supernatural killer or going mad, is beautifully handled. And the frequent scenes in a philosophy class provide some unexpected meat to the proceedings.

Unfortunately, the film ends with a revelation that raises more questions than it answers (and borrow from "Prom Night"). Worse, once that climactic moment occurs you know precisely where things are going to end up (and they do). With such a well-done middle section, it's a shame the film has such a disappointing beginning and end.

Arc Entertainment / 96m [R]

THE WHOLE TRUTH

Elisabeth Rohm plays a theater director and acting coach whose career went in a different direction after an attorney put her talents to use coaching defendants on how to behave on the stand in order to get acquittals.

Somehow it never occurs to her than any of these people are not only obviously creeps, but also obviously guilty. Perhaps that's not surprising since she doesn't even notice that her maid is wearing an obvious gray-haired wig in a lame effort to look older than her years. (Let's just pass over the fact that the maid is also running a financial consulting business out of her boss' study.) And she's completely oblivious that a washed-up TV actor she's coaching (Sean Patrick Flannery) is in love with her.

She gets Russian Mafia boss Yaro (Eric Roberts) off, but then overhears a conversation she shouldn't and goes running to the police who - given her track record of freeing the people they've arrested - aren't particularly interested in helping her. Put on the witness stand in a new trial, she has a meltdown when she's not as successful convincing the jury as is the defendant she coached.

I'm not sure where to begin with this mess that takes an intriguing premise and then becomes a textbook example of making every wrong decision. For starters, most of the actors are playing too big and too frantic to be funny; their performances reek more of desperation than comedy. (Only Flannery emerges with his dignity intact). When Roberts first appears he has stringy, shoulder-length hair dangling from an all too obvious bald cap; placed on the witness stand he sports a blond pompadour wig that resembles a Dairy Queen sundae plopped on his head and from under which his own darker hair obviously sticks out. Since this is a detail any jury member would spot it kills the joke (and is a good example of the decisions to go with stupid instead of funny).

Roberts turns in a performance that's pure schtick and Rohm is relentlessly over-emphatic ( supplying more mugging than Central Park sees in a month). Possibly they're trying to overcompensate for a script and directorial decisions that just plain aren't funny. "The Whole Truth" plays out as if all creativity was exhausted after the concept was formulated. Don't waste your time.

Green Apple / 99m / $24.98 [NR]

HARD ROMANTICKER

There's a slew of correlations made on the box for "Hard Romanticker," and I'm not sure any of them do the film any favors.

If you're expecting the lead character Gu to exude James Dean charisma or the story to bear any resemblance to "A Clockwork Orange" you'll be severely disappointed. The characters here are more in the nature of packs of street gangs whose criminal activity, when they're not whaling away on each other with a variety of blunt objects, is robbery and rape.

The first scene after the credits has two of these hoodlums breaking into a house they think is that of a rival gang member; it turns out to be the wrong house but when the old lady who lives there confronts them they beat the spit out of her and torch the place. She turns out to be the grandmother of Gu, a bleached blond who has his own gang; she survives but Gu naturally has to take revenge and those on whom he vents his anger then have to get revenge for that and - well, you get the idea and, by the way, you also get pretty much the entire plot of the film. About two-thirds of the way through Gu gets hired by the owner of a club in another city but aside from getting Gu conveniently elsewhere while the police and every gang member in his home town is looking for him this subplot (if it can properly be called that) goes nowhere.

This is a disturbing film on many levels. Chiefly because its sociopathic characters are all so young (there are suggestions peppered throughout the script that they are of high-school age and most of them look like kids), though given some of the problems in our own cities I suppose that shouldn't come as any surprise. But it isn't that they're involved in illegal activities that disturbs, it's their complete lack of emotion. Now I don't know how police practices might differ in Korea from here but writer/director Gu Su-yeon's film is supposed to be autobiographical so I'm assuming that police interrogations include beatings and are sometimes conducted in alleyways.

More disturbing - and this is the director's choice not a case of relating events - is that the violence toward women is more graphically depicted than that against men. Clearly the Gu behind the camera finds it more interesting to depict women being brutalized. As you may gather "Hard Romanticker" is seriously deficient in characters worth giving a darn about and that is actually a larger problem. The film never connects emotionally any more than the characters do.

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — The death of actor Leonard Nimoy last week has inspired people to post photos on social media of marked-up five-dollar Canadian banknotes that show former prime minister Wilfrid Laurier transformed to resemble Spock, Nimoy's famous "Star Trek" character. Full Story